July 13, 2010

Electronic Health Record Incentive Program Final Rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

On July 16, 2010, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released final rules for the Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) meaningful use initiative program. The rules for the Stage 1 criteria of meaningful use permit eligible professionals and eligible hospitals the option to defer some objectives/measures and to permit exclusions for the applicability of some objectives/measures. CMS developed the deferral option, which was not in the proposed rule released in January 2010, after reviewing concerns in the more than 2,000 comments it received on the proposed rule. The Medicare EHR incentive program will provide incentive payments to eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals that are meaningful users of certified EHR technology. The Medicaid EHR incentive program will provide incentive payments to eligible professionals and hospitals for efforts to adopt, implement, upgrade or meaningfully use certified EHR technology.